What happens to debt when you die?

Where debt goes when you're gone

In most places, debts are settled from your estate — what you owned pays what you owed, and whatever remains goes to your heirs. Family members generally don't inherit debt just by being related to you; they become responsible when they co-signed, held a joint account, or live somewhere the law works differently. The rules vary widely between countries, so treat this as orientation, not legal advice.

The practical problems, though, are the same everywhere. Creditors surface with claims your family has never heard of and can't easily verify. Loans between friends and relatives — often the largest debts of all — exist only as conversations. And money owed to you quietly disappears, because nobody knew to ask for it.

The two lists your family needs

• What you owe

  Bank loans, credit cards, and mortgages leave paper trails, but a personal loan from a friend, an outstanding invoice, or an informal business arrangement may exist nowhere but your memory.

• What's owed to you

  Money you lent, deposits you paid, work you invoiced, your share in an informal savings group. Without a record, your family has no way to know it exists — let alone claim it.

What a useful record looks like

• The amount and currency

  Write the exact figure and currency, and update it as it changes — an outdated number can cause more argument than no number at all.

• Who's on the other side

  The person's full name and how to reach them. A first name your family doesn't recognize helps no one.

• The story behind it

  When it was agreed, what has been repaid, whether anything was written down. Two sentences of context can settle what would otherwise become a dispute.

• Where the paperwork lives

  If a contract, receipt, or message thread proves the arrangement, say where to find it.

Keep it private now, clear later

A list of your debts is sensitive twice over: while you're alive it exposes your finances, and after you're gone your family needs to trust that it's genuinely yours and genuinely current. A note in a drawer fails both tests.

PostMortem's message boxes include financial records built for exactly this. Each entry captures the amount and currency, the direction — money you owe or money owed to you — the other person's name and contact details, and your notes. Like everything in a box, records are encrypted on your device, unreadable to everyone including PostMortem, and released to your chosen recipients only if you stop checking in.